If you made your way to the Eikon Exhibition Centre near Lisburn for Dubshed, then there’s one thing for sure. You missed something.
Northern Ireland’s largest and one of its longest running motoring events, this year’s Dubshed showcased over seven hundred cars, both inside and outside, it was pretty much impossible to see around everything.
What we did see was an incredibly high standard of display cars, as usual carefully hand-picked by the GTI NI team, still with VW Group cars at its core, but with a much broader range of cars from 911s, RS Audis to JDM legends such as the R34 Skyline.
Huge crowds of course turned up to the seminal motoring event, exposing the ever prevalent access issues at the Eikon centre, and highlighting the event’s continued success. We have no doubt ferries and flights were also filled with Dubshed fans; a credit to its deserved reputation well beyond Northern Ireland.
Of course Dubshed is a great family day out, one of the highlights for 2023 surely being the amazing live action display from Banbridge Aero-modelling Club, helped by the uncharacteristically dry weather that continued all weekend. With so much to see outside, being dry matters!
An abundance of trade stands provided plenty of car care products, stickers and garage wall décor. As well as pre-loved body parts for cars. A popular attraction indoors was the remote control drifting arena which was a mock-up of Belfast featuring Nuala with her Hula, as well as the Harland and Wolff cranes.
We spoke to Gethin and Nigel from the Dubshed team after then event.
Gethin remarked, “The atmosphere was great, plenty of diversity amongst the cars on display and no complaints on layout. AllTrak Rallysport experience was a hit, queued all weekend, both days. Trophies were unbelievable, The Shortshift completely raised the bar! Friday setup was busy and a good decision to open that up as it left Saturday morning a much more laid back affair for setup.”
Dubshed has traditionally marked the start of the car show season in Northern Ireland, and as always sets the bar high. This year was no exception, and we look forward to what the organisers have in store for us in the rest of 2023.
As the doors of the Eikon Centre close for this year’s show, we have plenty more to look forward to from the Dubshed team, with their other highly anticipated events such as Deutsch Collective and Eurotreffen still to come.
